


what of faith

by ewagan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23382091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewagan/pseuds/ewagan
Summary: Here is a secret: Yuri wants to believe. He wants to have faith. He wants to trust in someone, something. He wants to believe that it will not fail him, like everything else has failed him.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert & Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc, Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 6
Kudos: 99





	what of faith

_what do you believe in when there is nothing to believe in?_

* * *

Yuri has never been good at belief or believing or having faith. Faith was for people who believed in something better, something greater than themselves. Faith was for people who wanted forgiveness and absolution, who still believed in things like miracles. Faith was for people like Ashe, who had his prayers answered, found himself blessed beyond measure.

Yuri can repeat all the tenets of the Church of Seiros with a devotion to match the most pious, but he has never believed in them. Not when he has seen how uncaring the church can be, how absent this almighty goddess is. Not when anything and everything Yuri has managed to gather for himself has come from his own two hands, clawing and grasping and taking as much as he can from a world unwilling to give.

Yuri has never had anything he could believe in more than his own two hands, and whatever he could grasp within them. People faltered and wavered. Blades broke under pressure. Faith was dangerous, and Yuri has always preferred to load the dice instead of leaving it to the goddess' whims.

This is why he is terrible at white magic, because Yuri has never learned to believe in anything else.

It’s hard to resent Ashe when Yuri knows where he comes from, because he can see that painful hunger in Ashe’s eyes that he sees in his own reflection. But Yuri resents Ashe nonetheless—for his good fortune, for his faith, for his ability to keep dreaming, that the world has not failed him as badly as it had failed Yuri. Their paths had run parallel, but somehow Ashe had made all the right choices where Yuri had made the wrong ones time and again.

Life isn’t fair, and Yuri knows this well enough that he doesn’t think about it any more than he has to. But when he sees Ashe, he thinks that life _really_ isn’t fair.

* * *

Ashe is the one to confront him, in the end. Or maybe if Yuri hadn’t lost his patience, they would have gone the year without talking, Ashe constantly throwing furtive looks at him. Not that Yuri was avoiding him, but he’d certainly not made any effort to go anywhere near Ashe. There was plenty to do on the surface, and Yuri had never been one for idleness or passing up opportunities.

He knows Ashe had been watching him, because you don’t survive very long in his world if you didn’t pay attention to things like that.

“Can I help you?” he asks, when Ashe trails after him when he’s done haggling Anna down for a new dagger. Anna drove a hard bargain, but then so did Yuri. It was still a bit more than he’d wanted to pay, but a fair price for a blade like that.

Ashe looks more than a little stunned that Yuri is talking to him, and he ducks his head and flinches.

“Still timid, I see,” Yuri comments. “Now if it’s nothing, I have things to do and places to be.”

“Yuri, just. Wait.” Yuri raises an eyebrow, and Ashe takes a deep breath. “Just, you’ve been ignoring me.”

“And?”

“Well, I just thought—” Ashe pauses, then he forges on. “I thought we were friends,”

“No.”

“What?”

“I said no. As in no, we’re not friends.” Ashe looks flabbergasted. Why is it such a surprise?

Yuri can count his friends on one hand and have fingers to spare. Ashe isn’t one of them. At best, Ashe is one of the people he trusts to not want him dead. And Yuri isn’t in the business of making friends anyways.

"Yuri," Ashe has this oddly stubborn look on his face, like he's decided he won't budge. Yuri doesn't like it one bit. Looks like that mean trouble, and Yuri has plenty enough without whatever this is.

"We are not friends," Yuri says, tone sharp. Ashe flinches, but he stands his ground.

"Then we'll start right now. I'm Ashe Ubert, it's nice to meet you." He bows with his hand over his heart, all knightly manners drilled into him. His chin is high like a challenge, and Yuri can't turn it down.

“Yuri Leclerc,” he says, sweeping into the most grandiose bow he can. “Now, if you can spare me, I have matters to attend to.” He offers Ashe the most insincere smile he has before he turns on his heel, heading back to Abyss.

* * *

Yuri is still thinking about how Ashe’s hand had trembled as he drew his bow at the training yard earlier, how the shot had gone wild and nearly killed Sylvain, how their professor had suggested that maybe Ashe pick up a lance and practice drills with Dimitri instead.

He hadn’t been the same since that mission to Magdred Way, and Yuri supposes it's hard to blame him. Only one of these days Sylvain might actually get killed by a stray shot, and Ashe would blame himself even more if something happened.

Yuri finds him in the cathedral, hands tightly clasped together, head bent. Yuri’s never been one for forgiveness or absolution, but he knows Ashe believes in it still. It baffles him sometimes that Ashe can be this earnest when life has been hard to both of them, but he supposes that just makes Ashe a better person than him.

“You know, he wasn’t going to change his mind,” Yuri says, settling next to him on the pew. Ashe looks over at him with tired eyes, guilt and worry written into the line of his shoulders.

“If I tried harder to convince him—”

“He wouldn’t have listened, because he’d already decided what he was going to do.” Yuri cuts in. He looks up at the Crest of Seiros, starkly outlined against the light flooding in through the central windows. “He’d already decided, and nothing you said could change his mind,” Yuri says again, tone softer, gentler.

Ashe looks devastated by this. He probably knew it already, but having someone say it out loud makes it real, makes it a truth. Yuri pretends not to notice as Ashe’s shoulders begin to shake, his head bent swiftly to hide his face. He sits there and glares at anyone who looks their way, while Ashe fills the space between them with the pain he is carrying.

* * *

They're fishing. Well, Ashe is fishing while Yuri's sitting on the jetty, the wood warm and worn under his hands. They are making fish for dinner, or at least helping the cook catch a few more because some of it had been stolen by the monastery cats.

It’s a nice day, blue skies and wispy clouds. Yuri sometimes misses days like this when he’s down in Abyss, for all that he’s grown used to darkness around him. It suits him better anyways, unlike Ashe with his fair hair and green eyes.

“You know Yuri, you’re much nicer than you pretend to be.” Ashe says, casting the line.

Yuri snorts, opting to lie back and stare at the clouds. “That’s what you think,” he says. What would Ashe know anyways? He was inclined to believe the best of everyone; Yuri has long since lost that innocence and naïveté. Better to be cautious than have a knife in your back.

“That’s what I know,” Ashe replies stubbornly.

Yuri scoffs. “Do you know who I was before I was Yuri Leclerc?”

“Does it matter?”

Yuri’s smile is all teeth. “It does, more than you think.”

“I believe that you are better than you think you are,” Ashe says, simple conviction in his words. “I know it.”

Yuri does not know how he can have this belief, this faith in him. But then, Ashe has never seen him be cruel, be hard. He has never seen Yuri make the hard choices, the lengths he had gone to save his own skin. He thinks he understands, but Yuri thinks this is where he is wrong.

“Then you don't know me, Ashe Ubert.” They are silent for a while, faraway chatter and the soothing splash of water filling the space between them. A fish bites and Ashe reels it in easily, deftly unhooking it and dropping it in the bucket next to him where it struggles.

“Would you let me know you?” he asks, hooking another worm before casting his line out.

“You can try if you like,” Yuri shrugs. Nothing Ashe can find out will be something he can use against Yuri anyways. “I suspect you won’t like what little you can find.”

“I’d like to decide that for myself, Yuri.” There's steel in his voice as he says that, and Yuri raises his arms in surrender. Some battles weren't worth the fight, and Ashe is more than welcome to any unpleasant truths or unsavoury rumours he might find about Yuri.

“Suit yourself,” he says.

* * *

Yuri has made knowing his business. You cannot plan without knowledge, you cannot protect if you do not plan for it. Failure to plan is as good as straight-up failure in Yuri’s opinion, but there are things you cannot anticipate or plan for.

Edelgard’s plan is desperate and foolhardy, but perhaps it's just the right combination of both to succeed. He has to admire her resolve and her willingness to throw it all out there even if success isn’t certain, but he can only think of how this would hurt people everywhere, and wonder if her goals were worth the consequences.

A dragon roars, soaring above their heads. The Adrestian army advances with monstrosities before them, monsters the likes of which Yuri has never seen before, not even after years fighting off Hapi’s accidentally summoned monsters.

It’s easy to tell where the mages are, the whirlwind of Annette’s magic and the frigid ice of Constance’s casting from above. Easy to hear where Raphael and Balthus have engaged the enemy, where Byleth leads them all from the front. It devolves into chaos and Yuri’s fighting men and monsters alike, trying to stay alive even as spells and arrows fly past his head.

But he can tell they’re losing ground as they fight, that this had been a losing battle from the beginning. They were only ever buying time, and now they’ve run out. The call for a retreat sounds even as the dragon roars, a pained, angry sound that sets Yuri’s teeth on edge.

Here is a secret: Yuri wants to believe. He wants to have faith. He wants to trust in someone, something. He wants to believe that it will not fail him, like everything else has failed him.

Maybe this is why he can still use white magic, just enough to briefly staunch the flow of blood as it soaks through his cuffs, creeping up his sleeves. He yells for Balthus to come help him carry Caspar off the battlefield to where Linhardt or Mercedes is, because they can help more than he can.

Here's another secret: Yuri has always been desperately, desperately afraid of failure. And that fear has always been stronger than any faith or belief he might have had.

* * *

He disappears back into the shadows, because Yuri had only ever pretended at being noble. He knows where he belongs are shadowy alleyways and dark corners, where a knife pointed at you was more likely than a friendly smile.

Wartime is the best time to profit, if you’re smart and ruthless about it. The nobility of Adrestia is toppling as Edelgard bears down upon them, confiscating titles and lands alike. Yuri loots more than one noble house during this time, disgusted by the excesses he finds while people across the region struggle to get by. Gold is more useless than food, but Yuri takes it anyways. There will be use for it later if not now, as was the way of the world.

Yuri has his hands full with trying to keep his own people safe and fed. They’re used to a hard life, but Yuri knows life will only get harder from here on out. But they’ll manage, because that's how they've survived so far. Building palaces from scrap wood and making feasts from a couple of chickens.

He doesn’t think about the others, because there's no point wondering, If they lived, they lived. If they didn’t, well. It was simply the way of wars. Yuri is too practical to care overly much about it, and because he knows that there is time for grief and pain later.

Now, it is time to survive, and Yuri has always been good at that.

* * *

Faith again, he thinks. It always comes back to faith.

Yuri has found precious little to believe in during the better part of the years the war raged on, bringing more and more people to him, seeking help when all else had failed them. And he’d helped them, because he’d always been a bleeding heart, because people shouldn’t die because they can’t afford to live. _A kindness to aspire to,_ Ashe had once said.

Yuri has never believed himself something to aspire to. He has lied, cheated, fought, and killed his way through life, misdeed after misdeed with each step he takes forward. A little bit of do-gooding hardly makes up for all the crimes he has committed.

There’s little enough to believe in, much less a fanciful promise made years ago to meet again. But he thinks it can’t hurt to be there in case someone does show up. It can’t hurt to believe, just this little bit.

So when he hears his name echo across the reception hall, when Ashe barrels into him for a hug, when Byleth smiles at him from the end of the hall, Yuri can’t help the feeling that swells in his chest.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ashe says softly, as he releases Yuri.

“Wouldn't have missed it for the world.” He’s surprised to find he means it, especially with Ingrid and Annette coming for hugs and greetings, delighted smiles on their faces.

Maybe it was okay to believe in this, if only for now.

* * *

They're a mess, Yuri thinks. A hopeful, earnest mess that want to do right, but also terribly lost because Dimitri himself is lost.

Yuri doesn’t understand why they’re letting the half-mad talking-to-ghosts-only man make the decisions, but it’s not his call to make. He knows what he came back for, and it isn’t this. His loyalties are to himself first, then to the people he calls his own. It probably won’t be difficult to leave, except Ingrid smiles when she sees him, Annette keeps asking him to sing with her, Mercedes makes sweets for him, and Ashe keeps turning to look for him, following him with his eyes like before. Making sure he was still there, like he’s afraid Yuri would disappear.

It makes Yuri wonder.

But he stays, and he pulls his weight as they try to make the monastery habitable again. Yuri always has a space down in Abyss, and the people are willing to help because Yuri is up there, even if they don’t linger long. Byleth thanks him with a smile and his favourite pastry, though goddess knows where the sugar had come from.

He builds and rebuilds, because Yuri is good at taking scraps and making palaces of them, if only from sheer force of will and imagination. He trains with them, attends war meetings as they sketch out the makings of a campaign, planning routes only to have it all derailed by Dimitri’s outburst that it was to Enbarr they go or nowhere at all.

Yuri almost leaves there and then, but he sees the way Ashe’s eyes flick up towards him, keeping him in place. It doesn’t stop him from retreating into Abyss, where the rest of them dare not follow him to.

Ingrid comes to find him later for night watch. They’ve always gotten along well, if only because Yuri knows how to read the signs of a hard life, and for all her noble title, Ingrid’s life hasn’t been easy.

“Why are you here?” They're walking the outer grounds of the monastery, the moon a sliver in the sky. Yuri can trace out constellations Hapi had taught him a lifetime ago in the skies, so clear the skies are tonight.

“Because we have night watch?” she answers, bemused.

“Not what I meant. Why are you _here_?” Yuri asks again, because he really doesn't understand.

“Because I want to be.” she says. “Because I needed to do something besides staying home and letting hopelessness eat at me, watching as my country is torn apart by civil war.”

“And Dimitri?”

“He’ll come back,” she replies, certainty in her voice.

“How are you so certain?” he presses. He doesn’t understand, when it’s obvious that Dimitri as he is now is a bad choice, and he will not listen nor does he seem inclined to change.

“I want to believe, Yuri,” she says, slowly. “Because he is my friend, and because I failed him before by leaving, so I won’t repeat that mistake again.”

“He seems like a lousy bet to make,” Yuri comments.

Ingrid throws him a disapproving look, but she also sighs. She is hopeful, not stupid. “Maybe he is. But Yuri, is it so bad to have a little faith?”

* * *

Ashe comes to find him when they break for camp, leaving the scorching heat of Ailell behind them.

“Are you alright?” he asks. Yuri shrugs and strips off his armour, uncaring of propriety or modesty. He can still feel the uncomfortable heat simmering under his skin, how his sword kept slipping in his hands from sweat. He needs to clean his armour. He needs to clean his sword. He needs to keep his hands busy so he doesn’t think too hard.

He has killed plenty of people for lesser reasons, sometimes for no reason at all. Gwendal had chosen to die, so Yuri shouldn't feel guilty. It shouldn't weigh on him.

“Yuri.” Yuri strips off his gloves, and thinks maybe he should burn them. They're ruined from the blood now, and no amount of washing will make them clean again.

“ _Yuri!_ ” Ashe’s hands wrap around his wrists and he nearly punches Ashe out of reflex, tensing a moment before he forces himself to relax. His gaze drops to Ashe’s chest, focusing on the nicks in his chest guard so he doesn't have to look at Ashe, doesn’t have to see his expression.

“Hey,” Ashe’s voice is gentle, like his grip around Yuri’s wrists. Yuri could break the hold if he wants; it'd be so easy.

“I’m fine,” he says. But it doesn't sound right, doesn't sound convincing even to himself. He tries again. “I’m fine. You don’t have to be here.”

Yuri is a practical man, a pragmatist, a realist, a cynic. He knows if he hadn’t killed Gwendal, Gwendal would have killed him. No room for misplaced sentimentality.

He doesn't want to look up and see himself reflected in Ashe's gaze. He doesn't want Ashe's kindness or compassion or whatever the fuck it is. He doesn't need it.

“It's okay if you aren't,” Ashe says softly. “You don't have to be fine all the time.”

But Yuri’s fine. He’s fine, because he has to be, because he can’t afford to be not fine. They don’t have time for it, because they're in the middle of a war they could lose, and Yuri cannot afford loss. Losing is not an option, so he has to be fine.

But for a moment—just for a moment, just for this moment—he is not fine.

* * *

They march on Enbarr with a triumphant inevitability following their victories at Fhirdiad, Derdriu, and Fort Merceus, certain of their cause. Yuri follows because these are where the tides of war have led him, and the odds are in their favour.

There are those who believe they succeed because their cause is just, their purpose true. They have been blessed by the goddess, who guides them onwards in their path to punish Edelgard for her blasphemy against the church. Yuri is not so certain of that, not when they had been in a stalemate just months ago, one decisive battle away from Edelgard sweeping through Fódlan.

Hours before they enter Enbarr, Ashe comes to find him. Yuri’s not sure if he should be surprised or not, pausing in the middle of sharpening his daggers, not that they need to be any sharper.

“See you on the other side,” he says, fierce and bright as the noonday sun, the kind that Yuri hates the most.

“I’m not going down that easy,” he quips back. Ashe’s expression softens a little, and he smiles. Then he’s gone to where Byleth is waiting with Dimitri and the rest of them, the vanguard that would reshape their society.

Yuri learned how to put on armour at his mother's knee—the swipe of colour around his eyes, hair arranged to frame his face right, how to square his shoulders and keep his chin high. He learned to wield a blade from Gwendal, how to strike hard and true. He learned to survive in the poorest streets of Faerghus without being dependent on the kindness of people.

The sun is rising, and so is their army, their flag.

Yuri has no plans to die.

* * *

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Ashe picks his way over the loose tiles on the roof, nimble and surefooted. Yuri watches him and thinks that there are some things that just cannot be changed, too deeply ingrained in you.

“Didn’t fancy sleeping on the tables,” Yuri says.

Just a few hours ago, Yuri had been in the center of all the feasting, toasting and drinking everyone under the table. But it’s late enough now that most people have passed out on the tables, the fires slowly dying out. Yuri still has a bottle of wine next to him, the good stuff they’d dug out from Garreg Mach’s cellars. He offers it to Ashe, who settles down next to him.

“I can’t believe we actually did it.” Ashe says, taking a small sip from the bottle.

Yuri is less reserved, chugging down a good quarter of it. “And yet, here we are. Sitting on the roof of the monastery drinking the most expensive bottle of wine we’ve ever had.” Yuri squints at the bottle. “You think anyone would buy it if I filled it with cheap wine and resealed it?”

Ashe laughs, bright and clear as the moon above them. “You can try, but I don’t know if anyone will.”

“Oh, I’m sure one of those puffed up Alliance nobles will. Maybe Count Gloucester, if he’s still around.” Yuri’s smile is wicked, and Ashe laughs again. It feels good to hear it, because this kind of carefree laughter had been in short supply the last few years.

“Everything’s going to change,” Ashe says softly.

“You’re going to be a knight like you’ve always wanted.”

“You could be one too, you know.”

That makes Yuri laugh, because he’s never wanted to be one. Could never be one, because he knows he’s too selfish for it.

“I think you know me better than that,” he says gently.

“I do, Yuri,” Ashe says. “I know you, which is why I say that you’d make a great knight.”

Something in his chest aches at that, but Yuri just smiles at Ashe. “You have too much faith in me,” he tells Ashe, stretching out.

Ashe has an odd look in his eyes, or maybe Yuri has had too much wine. He doesn’t remember Ashe getting this close to him, nor does he remember finishing the bottle of wine. “Not too much,” Ashe murmurs. “Just enough.”

Faith.

Faith is a choice—to believe, then to keep believing.

Yuri has never been good at that. He’s always thought that he was too hard for it, too broken by life for that sort of faith.

But he looks at Ashe now, who believes and believes and believes, who _chooses_ day after day, to believe, to have faith. Who believes in him, believes in the better parts of him despite the things he’s seen Yuri do.

So he chooses now to believe. Chooses to take Ashe’s hand in his, feel the calluses formed from years and years of pulling bowstrings, know that these hands have saved and taken lives alike, know that they are capable of so much kindness. Chooses to put his faith in them.

Yuri has always been bad at faith and belief. But if faith is a choice, then Ashe is his.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments appreciated. you can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/ewagan).


End file.
